Miranda Balkin, MD
Email me. Miranda grew up in New York City and western Massachusetts. Bored in high school, she graduated early and spent a year in Boston's City Year program working in various local service organizations. At Oberlin College she majored in physics and women's studies and studied nonprofit management. She became involved in the Oberlin sexual assault/domestic violence hotline and parlayed that into a full-time job after graduation as a rape counselor at a public hospital in New York City. It was there that she fell in love with medicine and decided to become a doctor. Miranda later worked in global public health consulting before starting medical school. Her years in NYC were marked by her activism with several LGBT and women's rights organizations. Miranda is very happy to have finally finished her MD from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, NY and is very grateful to the patients who have taught her most of what she knows about medicine and how to practice it effectively. She recently finished a term as president of the national board of directors of Medical Students for Choice. In her spare time Miranda enjoys reading, knitting, eating whatever her wife feels like cooking, and playing with her daughter.
Kathleen R. Caridad, MD
Email me. Kathleen was born and raised in New Jersey, and grew up in Montclair, a suburb of New York City. Her father, a cardiologist and professor of Medicine and Physiology at NYU, had emigrated from Cuba as a child; her mother, an actress and theatre manager, was born in Ireland and came to the U.S. at age 11 after living in England and Africa. This combination provided a unique upbringing for Kathleen and her younger sister and brother, and certainly influenced Kathleen's passion for connecting with people from all walks of life, through both science and the arts. Kathleen has since lived in the Boston area for several years, first attending college at Harvard, where she was in a tap dance group and directed a Big Brothers Big Sisters program, then working in Cambridge doing outreach, research, and patient/provider education with a non-profit group called the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma. It was through her work there - specifically in behavioral health and health promotion for underserved immigrant populations - that she became interested in medicine, and particularly primary care. After a brief stint as a student and hospice volunteer in Panama City, Florida, where her husband, Rob, was stationed as an Air Force JAG attorney, Kathleen returned to Boston where she attended Tufts Medical School. There, she served as a student representative on the curriculum committee, worked with Physicians for Human Rights, and fell in love with Family Medicine. Though still a loyal Yankees fan, Kathleen is very happy to be staying in Boston, where her husband now works as a commercial real estate attorney, and she is thrilled to be joining the Tufts Family Medicine Residency Program. She plans to spend any free time she'll have with friends, family, Rob and their dog, Sasha, going for long walks, dancing, reading, and trying new recipes.
Bethany-Rose Daubman, MD
Email me. Bethany-Rose was born in rural New York and grew up spent all of her free time riding and training horses. For a long while, she thought she'd become a professional horseback rider and spent college summers wrangling at a dude ranch, bareback stunt-riding, and competing in show jumping. While volunteering at a veterinary office, however, she became enamored with the medicine surrounding horse care, and eventually decided to become a people doctor.
She matriculated into an accelerated B.S./M.D. program, making her the perpetual baby of her college and medical school classes. In college, she competed in racquetball, basketball, softball, and was a member of the equestrian team. She spent an inordinate amount of time watching lab rats run through mazes, and has been the primary investigator for several bench and clinical research projects. To ensure that she would never have time to sleep, she pursued an additional Distinction in Bioethics with a concentration in Geriatrics/Palliative care.
During medical school, Bethany-Rose volunteered as a Spanish translator for health screenings, was Student Coordinator for the AIDS Education program (medical students and patients living with HIV collaborating on safe sex presentations for high school students), volunteered at a youth homeless shelter, and was a mentor for a local college's Minority Association of Future Physicians.
Bethany-Rose is also a concert harpist and throughout college and medical school played her harp for the dying through Hospice. It is through these end-of-life experiences that became enamored with Family Medicine, and the deep, lasting patient-doctor relationship. She is thrilled to be joining the Tufts family and very much looking forward to life outside rural New York. Her medical interests include palliative care and spirituality in medicine.
Outside of medicine, she enjoys Medical Wilderness Triathlons, cage fighting (yes, really), as well as kung fu and jiu jitsu. She also enjoys running, writing, baking, and most sports.
Paul A. Frydrych, MD
Email me. Paul was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. He studied at the University of Western Ontario, majoring in Physiology. Long interested in pursuing medicine, Paul furthered his exposure to the field by volunteering in various hospital settings throughout high school and university. He was also involved in basic and clinical research on topics ranging from murine models of osteoporosis, pathophysiology of atherosclerosis, and evaluation of diagnosis and treatment for stress urinary incontinence. Completing his MD at Northwestern University, Paul volunteered at Chicago's free Community Health Clinic; participated in primary care sports medicine research; led the VA Patient Perspectives group which helps freshman med students enhance their communication skills; and raised money for Northwestern University's Alliance for International Development by playing in several battles-of-the-band with the much ballyhooed all-med-student supergroup 'Autopirate'. Despite growing to love Chicago - its people, architecture, food and city planning - Paul is thrilled to have the opportunity to train at Tufts/CHA and live in beautiful Boston. Paul's interests include playing guitar, running, biking, lifting, hockey, reading, philosophy, history, movies, and relaxing with family and friends.
Tess Landry, MD
Email me. Tess was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, the birthplace of basketball and Dr. Seuss. She was the valedictorian of Cathedral High School, where she played basketball and sang as a soprano in the concert choir. Tess graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a minor in Psychology. While at UMass, Tess received a junior fellowship in Biology and conducted research on the effects of perchlorate in fetal brain development and thyroid hormone synthesis.
Following her undergraduate studies, Tess served as a research assistant for two years at Harvard Medical School, where she conducted research investigating the ability of small molecules to perturb the cell cycle.
In 2006, Tess entered Tufts University School of Medicine. While at Tufts, Tess was involved in adolescent community outreach projects and served as the finance manager for the Sharewood Project - a free student-run health clinic in Malden. During her experiences at Sharewood, she discovered her desire to work with the underserved. Tess also has an interest in sports medicine. She is very excited to be joining the Tufts Family Medicine Residency Program and to continue to live amongst members of the Red Sox Nation. Tess lives with her husband, Brian, and enjoys golf, cooking, hiking, and canoeing.
Casey Lien, MD
Email me. Casey Lien was born in Edmonds, WA and grew up in Bellevue, WA both suburbs of Seattle. He attended Washington University in St. Louis where he played soccer earning 2nd team Scholar All-American honors his senior year and graduated with a BSBA with majors in accounting and finance. He returned home to Seattle to work for a small start-up company Giant Campus and eventually started his own company CineVend with a friend from college creating one of the first completely portable vending machines as well as creating the first network of DVD rental machines in Seattle. Unable to find his passion in the business field he retuned to school to study medicine, an interest that had been sparked early on when he battled cancer at the age of eight.
While at the University of Washington he pursued many interests including in global health where he spent a month in Cuba and a year in Ecuador, in underserved medicine where he served on the Board of Directors for a student run clinic, and in the blending of technology and medicine where he worked in collaboration with the engineering department on the MDphone project.
Outside of medicine he enjoys spending time with his wife, playing in the outdoors hiking, kayaking, biking, skiing and fishing. Most recently he took up photography after trading in his guitar for something a bit more practical for the move across country.
Clinton Kazuo Pong, MD
Email me. Clinton was born and raised in Hawaii. He dreamed about the earth and stars as a young boy, entertaining notions of becoming a geologist or an astronaut someday. He wanted to dedicate his life to teaching, mentoring and tutoring and felt that becoming a science teacher would be noble and worthwhile. However, his real passion lay in human stories -- the truths that come out of myth and the interesting life lessons that all sorts of people can share. It was the synthesis of these three interests -- science, teaching and story -- that put him on a path toward medicine. He graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and received a Bachelors of Science in Biology in 2005. His research interests include undergraduate work in an Insect Systematics lab and work during medical school on malaria infection in pregnant women (no, it was not a randomized controlled trial). He also worked as a ward clerk for a hospital and learned the value of legible doctor's handwriting! He attended the John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) at the University of Hawaii where he spent a lot of time at a student-run homeless outreach clinic. It was there that he found a lot of great mentors and dedicated faculty who nurtured his fondness for lasting patient relationships, patient education and just patience into the devotion to Family Medicine that he has today. In his free time, he loves cooking spontaneously, blogging sporadically, reading prolifically, playing Frisbee, going hiking, and playing D&D.
Christopher Simons, MD
Email me. Chris was born on the South Shore of Massachusetts, raised in southern New Hampshire, and has been able to stay close to family and friends in New England ever since. After finishing high school in his hometown of Nashua, NH, he came back to MA to study biology at Boston University. While there, he was able to teach biology laboratories, become a member of the Red Cross Disaster Action Team, and help transform the game room he worked at into a popular on-campus concert venue.
Interested in primary care and medicine for the underserved, he decided to stay at BU to pursue his medical training at its school of medicine and Boston Medical Center. During his time there, he was able to foster these interests through many activities, including performing HIV testing and counseling, studying medical Spanish in Guatemala, co-leading the Family Medicine Interest Group, teaching interviewing skills to first-year students and serving a two-year stint on the Massachusetts Academy of Family Physicians' Board of Directors.
Having trained in practices from downtown Boston to Cape Cod and central Maine, he is excited to join the Tufts and Cambridge Health Alliance communities and get to know another area of the part of the US that he is proud to call home. When you can't find him at the clinic or roaming the hospital, you can bet he is cheering on one of the New England sports teams, singing his heart out at a local concert, or curled up somewhere with a good book.